Do you ever just have moments where you think about your closest friends, and feel overwhelmed with gratitude? Like your whole heart could explode with love and joy? Thinking “how did I end up with the best people in the world as my closest friends, my sisters, I am so damn lucky”, it honestly brings me to tears (happy tears), if I sit and think about all the beautiful women in my life. As women, being supported by and connected with other women is one of the greatest joys in life, there really is nothing like sharing stories, mindful listening or just being within the presence of other women that truly love you exactly as you are, there is nothing quite so blissful, uplifting and deeply soul nourishing.

It is so unfortunate that from such a young age we are taught to see other women as competitors, rather than encouraged to support and uplift one another. This becomes something that we have to learn on our own after we’ve already acquired a bunch of insecurities by constantly comparing ourselves to each other, with society always pushing an agenda on us that has us think that we are defined entirely by our physical appearance. I do understand it a bit more now though, finally at the age of 28, I understand that the world has just been scared this whole time at the immense power women hold as a collective, what we are capable of when we work together, when we fuse our energies and heal the world with love. Because essentially that is what it comes down to, the power of love, as naturally maternal beings, whether we want to become mothers in our lifetime or not, the healing power of love that we hold is engrained in us. This deep rooted love is what I can feel within me when I am surrounded by my women, my family members, my chosen sisters, even at times with complete strangers.

Have you ever met someone that seemed so familiar, you were so sure you’d met them before? This happened to me at a women’s retreat, it was a one day retreat in the beautiful Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland, Australia. This one woman who was also attending the retreat, just looked so familiar, that I was so sure she must have been a client of my step mum’s Bowen Therapy clinic and that I must have just seen her pop in and out a few times. I attended this retreat with my mum, step mum, aunts and a cousin. I asked my step mum, “is that woman one of your clients? I’m trying to figure out where I know her from”, “no I’ve never seen her before, but she keeps looking at you like she knows you too”. This honestly shocked me, because I was so sure that she must have been my step mums client, I wracked my brain trying so hard to think of how and why she looked so familiar.

During the retreat we did a number of beautiful exercises, for one of them we all stood around in a circle, and one of us would stand in the centre of the circle, surrounded by the rest of us, the woman in the middle would walk around the circle and look each one of us in the eyes. It was an incredibly powerful practice that often brought whoever was in the middle to tears, a practice that allowed you to be seen completely, exactly as you are, and be held and supported by the surrounding feminine energies. For some, this could also be a really confronting exercise, to be so vulnerable, maybe to be truly seen for the first time, each of us carried a different experience. The woman who looked familiar to me, took her turn in the center, she made her way around the circle, and when she got to me she paused, we stared into each others eyes and we both smiled, suddenly tears filled my eyes. I still to this day don’t know what it was, but we had a connection that I can’t explain, she felt it too and it was at this moment I realised, that everything is energy, frequencies and vibrations that we could spend our lifetimes trying to understand. Our deep inner knowing and understanding of each other and the intertwining of our feminine energies creates a palpable connection, in one word I would simply describe it as magic.

People come and go throughout the duration of our lives, some stay for just a little while but still make a big impact, others stay for a long while. All of these connections, no matter how fleeting, seemingly significant or insignificant, are still meaningful connections that served a purpose at the time we probably needed it most. Whether it was for you to learn something about yourself, or because that person needed something you could give them at the time, we don’t always understand it and perhaps we don’t always need to. There have been connections in my life that felt authentic and strong at the time, only for those connections to dissipate into seemingly thin air, some without a trace or a word. Whilst this can be confusing and uncomfortable to sit with, as you wrack your brain trying to figure out what it is that you did to lose it, “was it something I said?”, “do you just not like me anymore?” “did I do something wrong?”, with time I’ve come to terms with the fact that I was lucky to experience those connections/friendships when I did, and they served a purpose for me, and hopefully for them at the time, but it wasn’t here to stay, and that’s ok too. I’ve grown to be super grateful for all the connections in my life, the ones that have been and gone, the ones that are here to stay and the ones I am yet to experience. One thing I’ve learned these past few years is that it isn’t always about who has known you the longest, it’s about the ones who make you feel seen, heard, understood, appreciated, supported and loved, in all of our seasons.

Having moved from Australia to Costa Rica, has come with many challenges, but I think the biggest challenge of all, is the distance from my friends. Nothing can prepare you for the heartache of missing your girlfriends, they are long distance relationships in their own right. It is actually from travelling Costa Rica last year with my best friend that led me to moving here less than a year later. Simultaneously, my best friend who I travelled with, fell in love with Mexico and moved there less than 2 months before I left Australia. So fortunately, our lives are synergistically intertwined and I do have my best friend in the same Central American time zone as me, which has made life a lot easier at times, when I just need a girlfriend to talk to, but don’t have to worry about the 16 hour time difference between Costa Rica and Australia.

My closest friends are my soul sisters, my second mothers, my hype girls, my reality checks, my reassurance, my team members, my lovers, my guardian angels. I simply wouldn’t be where I am or who I am today, without the women in my life. So this is basically a love letter to all my best friends, who have given me some of the greatest gifts this human experience has to offer. Most of my favourite moments in life so far, are memories with my best friends by my side, moments of laughter, the deep belly kind where your eyes are so wet that no one is sure if they’re still laughing or crying, nights of drinking too much wine and twerking to early 2000’s bangers, adventure hiking after driving to melancholic songs that validated heartaches and heartbreaks. The sleepovers spent watching chick flicks, putting face masks on and drinking herbal tea’s in our dressing gowns together after moving into our own apartments in our new found freedom and independence, morning walks and coffee dates, the list could go on and on.

As a woman, female friendships serve many purposes within our lives, they teach us about our deeper selves, our fears and projections, but they also teach us about love. The love that can be found in each and every one of us, the potential we hold as unique individuals, the power in our individuality, the strength in our flaws, the beauty in our imperfections. So often we see these in our friends, admiring them even more for these, yet we criticise our own and refuse to stand in our own power. This is a reminder to let the beauty and strength of the women you’ve chosen to keep in your life, be a reflection of your own. If you have loving women in your life, it is because you too, are an embodiment of love in every sense of the word. If you ever sit there staring into the souls of your girlfriends, perhaps intending to mindfully listen, only to be swept away by your own thoughts and feelings of gratitude and admiration for the beauty in front of you, I can guarantee that these women sit in awe of you too. I simply wouldn’t be who or where I am today, without the selflessness, support, mentorship, differences, similarities, gentleness, strength, resilience, vulnerability, tenderness, modesty, humility and love, of the women I am lucky enough to have in my life.

May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them.

You know who you are, I love you xx